In January 2023, the exhibition „Sixteen Objects – Seventy Years of Yad Vashem“ was displayed in the German Bundestag. The history of these objects from the collection of the International Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem can be traced back to each of the 16 German federal states. The object representing Hamburg was a Torah ark (Aron Hakodesh) created by Leon Daniel Cohen from Altona, which he took with him when he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. In 1944, Leon Daniel Cohen and his family were murdered in Auschwitz. The Torah ark became part of the Yad Vashem collection.
Now, the Torah ark returns temporarily to Altona as a loan for the exhibition which was developed in cooperation with the Friends of Yad Vashem. This object serves as the starting point for a search for the memories that Leon Daniel Cohen and his family left behind in Hamburg-Altona. Where did they live and work? What can be discovered about the family’s history? Additionally, the story of Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt will be told. She was deported from Altona to Theresienstadt in 1943 but fortunately survived the camp. Upon her return to Hamburg, she brought with her the “Theresienstadt Collection”: drawings and documents secretly gathered there by the deportees. These sources give important insights into the situation of the Cohen family might have faced there can be drawn.
The exhibition highlights the void left by the persecution, deportation, and murder of the Jewish residents of Altona. Places such as the Altona synagogues or the Cohen family’s homes have been destroyed, and their belongings were scattered and destroyed during the deportation. Nevertheless, it has been possible to make some traces of the lives of Leon Daniel Cohen and Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt visible again, contributing to the study of Altona’s history during the Nazi era.
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